Nearly eight years after the Santa Barbara Unified School District bought a former National Guard Armory, leaders are moving forward with plans to potentially turn the site into a career and technical education center.

The Board of Education on Tuesday received an update on the district’s plans for the 700 E. Canon Perdido St. site, which is between Santa Barbara High School and Santa Barbara Junior High School.

While some board members and the public were divided over how to move forward, community members will have a chance to share their input on the site’s future in the coming months.

School board member Gabe Escobedo said the site could be used to provide additional career and technical education pathways that fit the needs of local jobs.

“We can keep our kids here in a place where it is very expensive, where opportunities are sometimes hard to come by,” Escobedo said. “We’re creating the space to meet a need here for our students and providing them agency to decide what their life can look like.”

In 2018, the board purchased the site for $11.6 million using Measure I funds, which were designated for the site to be used as a satellite facility or for specialized programs, according to Steve Venz, the district’s chief operations officer, adding that the site was never meant to be a “comprehensive school location.”

The project is in the planning and design phase, but district staff hopes to present renderings to the board this summer. Once renderings are complete, the project will have to be reviewed by the Department of Education for approval to move forward with construction.

Construction on the site most likely wouldn’t start until summer 2028, and the site wouldn’t be ready for use until 2030, Venz said.

The site includes a large, historic armory building with a gymnasium, four smaller buildings that can support a total of 20 classrooms, and a parking lot where Venz said they could build workforce housing or other facilities.

At this time, the district won’t be able to use the main armory building as it needs significant seismic retrofitting repairs, which Venz said will cost an “enormous” amount of money.

In the coming months, the district will be seeking public input on services provided at the site and will be exploring how much funding is needed to operate the site.

Board member Celeste Kafri wanted to take a step back and examine the district’s existing facilities, programs and funding before deciding what to do with the site. 

“I just want to understand how the armory works in our entire ecosystem, and I don’t think right now, we as a board, we have a strong understanding of how our facilities mesh with our strategy in the future,” Kafri said. “We need to have a really cohesive plan and not just look at buildings in isolation.”

During the next few months, the community will be invited to a series of discussions, yet to be scheduled, at each junior high school about the armory and provide input on what they’d like to see at the site, according to the district.

John Dent, a career and technical education teacher who teaches media at Dos Pueblos High School, said that while he was excited about a career and technical education center in 2018, the district has now built numerous career and technical education facilities on school sites. 

“If our strongest CTE programs are already operating in modern facilities on our campuses, we need to carefully examine whether building a separate regional CTE center is still the best approach,” Dent said. “A project of this scale will require tens of millions of dollars and the long-term operational commitments, so we should make sure that that model truly fits the structure and needs of our district.”

Alice Post with the Coalition for Neighborhood Schools argued that the site could also be used as a downtown elementary school. She added that there is a “desert” of school sites in downtown neighborhoods, which means students in downtown neighborhoods can’t walk to school.

Post added that the district could work with Santa Barbara City College to expand career and technical education opportunities. 

“The armory campus offers adequate space to meet the educational needs of both the SBUSD and SBCC for CTE, adult education, and it would help Santa Barbara restore neighborhood elementary school concept,” Post said.